Thursday, June 05, 2008

And they didn't even pinch a handkerchief

Tens of thousands of prisoners are opting not to apply for early release amid allegations that Britain's prisons are now so comfortable that they are effectively "expensive bed and breakfasts". The figures were released on Tuesday by Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, who also disclosed that dozens of people have been caught trying to break into prisons over the past few years... Between 2003 and 2008, 42 individuals were detected attempting to break into prisons. The number of prison break-ins has increased from five in 2003-04 to 19 over the past year. Most were people breaking into open prisons.

So it's come this far, has it? When did the people trying to break into the prisons start thinking they were entitled to this? Getting into prison is hard, and you have to work for it! Sometimes, it takes years of dedicated law-breaking before people get into one of those prisons. Just look at Jeffrey Archer. Many corporate offenders steal billions and billions of shareholders money in an effort to buy their way into one of these institutions, without success. And yet these people just blithely come along and think they have an equal right to the same services as all those hard-working thieves, murderers, rapists, and common old criminals out there!

Speaking as an Australian - a nation founded by convicts who worked stole hard to get where they were - I am shocked and appalled at the appalling and shocking sense of entitlement by these would be 'criminals'.

4 comments:

Hmmm - it's disgusting. They should be paying for their keep. Every other bed and breakfast makes you pay to stay. Why should a prison be any different?

They even get rooms with - I think it's EXTRA PADDED cells whereas your usual B&B just has a normal room. This kind of luxury. Man it makes you weep.

Australia is a convict country. We should be proud of it and not hide it and make sure we put the crims first in our prison system not some other people who wish to cosy up in a cell like non-wrongdoers. You'd think they thought they could jsut mosey on in there.

Well, I'm sorry but you gave up those rights the moment you didn't commit a crime!

It makes you sick, doesn't it? These repeat non-offenders. Not only don't they break the law once, they keep o not breaking it. And if the think that's their ticket to jail, they've got another think coming. They can like freedom, or lump it!

Showing an unimaginably entrepreneurial spirit, the Australian Government of recent years invoiced repatriated asylum seekers it had plonked in its detention centres. Makes you proud to be an australopithecus.